Moving in with a partner can be an exciting and difficult transition. It is a tightrope walk of respecting the space that has been theirs, while creating an environment in which you feel at home. Each step of the process feels a bit unsure, but making progress fills you with pride.
After three years and a handful of months, I moved in with my boyfriend back in January. Since then life has been a bit chaotic, but in an effort to move things along and get back to normal, also so I don't need to freeze in the basement every day, we started working toward an in-home office space for me.
Deciding on the Space
There are three bedrooms in Matt's house. The biggest being our bedroom, one being Matt's office, and what used to be Matt's bedroom which serves as the guest room. However, when the decision for me to move in came around, we both knew that I needed a space of my own. Not only to stay organized and feel at home, but to take some time to myself when everything gets too overwhelming.
So, we still need a guest room because we do love to host others, but I also need an office space. Why not combine the two? A majority of the time the house just contains Matt, Killian, and myself, so it will almost always be solely an office space. All that I had to keep in mind when planning things out was the dimensions of the guest bed. This became a bit of a conflict in our discussions but I feel as if we came to a good conclusion.
Dreaming up the Design
Similar to my hobby-loving boyfriend, I have a lot of different interests. Though my items are much smaller than his, I do still have a lot of stuff coming with me. Yarn, fabric, clothes, an abundance of shoes, assorted crafts, plants, more plants, even more plants; they all take up a lot of space. My new office not only needed to accommodate all of my passions, but incorporate them and look great.
From the start, I knew I wanted to paint a deep, moody green on three out of the four walls. The accent wall would be a darker charcoal shade to feature Matt's creation: a murphy bed with shelving for plants and a hidden fold out table for my sewing. He will be designing and building this all on his own and I am so excited for that finished product as his work is beautiful. Before we could get to that though there was some drywall work that needed to be done.
Originally, the house had a strange wood accent piece about three inches from the ceiling in every room. We needed to remove that, patch the entire section as it peeled layers off the current drywall, let it dry, sand it down, even it out, sand again, clean the walls of drywall dust, and then we could start the painting process. I say "we" needed to do all of this, but we all know I played a very small role in a majority of that work and let Matt handle it all. Though I did the cleaning of the walls with this waxed cheesecloth that did incredible work and left my hands so very dry. Additionally, he moved the outlet box on the accent wall from near the floor to near the ceiling for future use with grow lights around the murphy bed frame.
The Painting Process
Here was my opportunity to shine! While Matt finished up work on the sanding, I took myself to the store and bought paint. Did I go to the store where we had purchased the samples we had tested previously as pictured above? If you guessed yes, you have too much faith in me. If you guessed no, you are correct. I knew there was a Home Depot closer to the grocery store I already was stopping at and thought I could just stop by there and pick colors that would be close enough. Little did I know, I was way wrong.
The first day was incredibly frustrating. I went from so excited, to a bit hopeful, to just fully dejected in a course of a few hours. This was my first solo project at the house and I immediately messed it up. I should have just gone out to Menards and bought the paint we had already tested. Instead, I wasted money, I wasted time, and I disappointed myself. There is a major problem that comes from being a spontaneous, "it'll all work out," perfectionist. Most of the time it does not in fact all work out the way in which I would like.
Matt was so frustrated with me for mixing the paints. At the time, I thought I was being innovative and clever. Now, I do understand his reaction; we plan to paint the murphy bed to match the wall and now we have a custom paint color that will be very difficult to match. Truthfully, I did not expect the paint mixing to end up being a color I liked and it's not necessarily my dream color at the end of the day so we will probably repaint anyway. For now though, my quick fix seemed to work.
So, I went back and purchased the original green. I fully intended to also buy a primer and make it an even longer, more annoying process, but the woman at the paint counter assured me I didn't need additional primer; she was correct. I blame all commercials for trying to convince me that Behr is the superior paint, when really Pittsburgh out painted it in every single way. Don't be fooled by catchy commercial jingles folks, they will fail you.
Prior to Matt returning home from his work trip, I completed painting the walls to my satisfaction level (though there are a few spot where my arm got a bit tired and the roller slid too close to the ceiling.) Next it was his turn to step in and do all custom trim.
Unfortunately it was at this point that I realized I did not get any pictures of the trim before I started painting. However, my absolute favorite part is the trim underneath the window sill. It is layered and complex and just incredibly stunning. Look for it in the upcoming videos and photos, but I am serious when I say it is outstanding.
Wrapping it all Up
I am slowly adding new pieces here and there. This weekend we will put some acrylic signs up in the back corner. I still have more plants to add in to the space. Obviously we still have the murphy bed to build. I want to print off photos for my walls. We have discussed a design for a custom desk that Matt will build and it is seriously the desk of my dreams. Next purchase for me though will be a fluffy rug for the middle of the room. I think it will really tie the whole room together and add some much needed softness. As I add in more decorations I will share pictures on the instagram account.
I am in love with my space, so happy that Killian is content to just chill in the room with me, and so incredibly grateful that Matt and I work so well together. There may be some bumps in the road, and some tears (on my overly-emotional part), but at the end of the day we both just want our work to be perfect and we make gorgeous things together.
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